Jon Snow’s Reunion With Ghost Was Yet Another Example Of ‘Game Of Thrones’ Cheating Its Way To An Emotional Climax

Game of Thrones ended with Tyrion Lannister’s assurance that Bran Stark would be a good king, but many fans were more interested in Jon Snow’s assurance that another character is a very good boy, yes he is.

Dog lovers were happy when Jon Snow gave his direwolf Ghost a pat in the series finale, but the only reason why viewers were so overjoyed at the simple pat was because Jon conspicuously did not pet Ghost two episodes earlier, in what we thought would be their final farewell. It was the final example of a storytelling trick that has plagued late-era Game of Thrones, and it might actually be the most blatantly manipulative, because it involved a dog.

The last two seasons of the HBO smash-hit have, on multiple occasions, deprived the audience of important scenes or information for the sake of artificially increasing the surprise or drama of a later scene. Take Littlefinger’s death in the Season 7 finale, for example. For several episodes beforehand, audiences saw Arya and Sansa turn against one another, so viewers weren’t expecting the them to suddenly figure out Littlefinger’s nefarious ruse and execute him.

It made for a shocking moment, but that’s really all it was — a moment. As cool as it was for Sansa to unexpectedly turn the tables on Littlefinger, many viewers felt cheated upon reflection. When did Sansa, Arya, and Bran figure this out? That seems like it would have been an important scene for viewers to see, one that would’ve strengthened the bond between the siblings by showing them working together, and it would have shed some light on how Bran’s vague three-eyed raven powers work as an added bonus.

But that scene would have made Sansa’s “How do you answer these charges … Lord Baelish?” moment less surprising, which is why it wasn’t in the episode. By denying the audience this, Game of Thrones was able to deliver a fleetingly effective shock that was soon replaced with a feeling that the show wasn’t playing fair.

The same goes for Rhaegal’s unexpected death in Season 8. Viewers were totally floored when a scorpion bolt came out of nowhere to send a mighty dragon to a watery grave, but the awful majesty of the moment was replaced with nagging questions almost as soon as he disappeared beneath the surf. Where did Euron come from? How did Daenerys not see his fleet? How was his aim so good? All these questions don’t have answers because Game of Thrones was more interested in leaving us in the dark so they could wow us, however briefly.

Jon petting Ghost in the series finale isn’t exactly a shocker like Littlefinger or Rhaegal’s death, but the emotional impact of it still relies on depriving the audience. In the fourth episode of the season, there’s no real reason why Jon wouldn’t have given Ghost a pat before parting ways.

The episode’s director, David Nutter, told Insider that Ghost and Jon didn’t touch because it simplified the filming process, echoing earlier explanations from people on Thrones‘ VFX team about how hard it is to put direwolves in the show. Well, they managed to figure out how to make Jon and Ghost touch in the finale, two episodes later, so this explanation is less satisfactory. Even so, because Jon didn’t pet his dog, viewers had two weeks to stew over how poorly he — and by extension, the show — was treating Ghost. They wanted more, and not for the first time.

In the Song of Ice and Fire books that Game of Thrones is based on, Ghost and Jon have a much, much stronger bond. It’s suggested that there’s a magical aspect to their relationship, and Jon is even able to warg into Ghost, to a limited extent. The show omits all this, stripping the supernatural aspects of their bond and cutting Ghost from seasons of the show at a time.

Book-reading fans and dog-lovers alike already had plenty of reason to be fed up with the show’s treatment of Ghost, to the point where any time he was on screen it was a cause for celebration. Jon’s decision not to pet Ghost in “The Last of the Starks” harnessed this desire for more Ghost by depriving the audience of what would have been a meaningful scene.

The simple act of petting a dog made Jon and Ghost’s reunion emotional because the showrunners opted to have him not pet the dog two episodes earlier. With that decision — a simple one, even if rotoscoping a wolf into the shot is a complex visual effect — suddenly the stakes are higher. Arya and Sansa don’t know about Littlefinger until they do. There aren’t dragon-killing warships on the horizon until there are. Jon doesn’t pat Ghost until he does.

In Ghost’s case, it’s a minor but telling creative decision. So much of what happens in the final two seasons has felt contrived, the plot reverse engineered in order to get to a preordained conclusion as quickly as possible. Game of Thrones ended its run by cutting corners and cutting scenes in order to achieve a quick emotional high. Unlike in the earlier seasons, where we go is more important than how we got there. It’s the tail wagging the dog, but at least he got a pat at the very end.

James Grebey is a pop culture journalist who writes for Syfy Wire, GQ, Billboard, Rotten Tomatoes, The Columbia Journalism Review, and more. Find more of his work at those places, or check out his dump photoshop jokes on Twitter.

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